Privacy rights advocates filed a letter with the FTC, asking the commission to investigate Facebook’s user tracking after log off and whether Facebook’s new Ticker and Timeline feature constitute unfair or deceptive business practices.

T-Mobile files amicus brief in the Northern California District Court, supporting Samsung in a patent dispute with Apple over its iPhone and iPad designs.

Verizon has sued FCC to halt net neutrality rules, arguing that the FCC has no authority to issue rules affecting the Internet.

AT&T moved to dismiss antitrust lawsuits brought by Sprint Nextel and Cellular South over AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, arguing that both companies were looking to block the deal for self-interested reasons.

The Supreme Court denied the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ petition for certiorari, declining to decide whether downloading a song is a public performance, which would entitle artists to get paid additional royalties.

]]>http://stlr.org/2011/10/05/stlr-link-roundup-october-5-2011/feed/01608The Right to Be Forgotten?http://stlr.org/2011/04/06/the-right-to-be-forgotten/
http://stlr.org/2011/04/06/the-right-to-be-forgotten/#commentsWed, 06 Apr 2011 12:00:08 +0000http://www.stlr.org/?p=1219Continue Reading →]]>Have you ever Googled your own name? Statistics say that you probably have. Egotism aside, in a world where potential employers, schools and even romantic partners are likely to Google you, it would be irresponsible not to be aware of what pops up when you search your name. Many experts (and this non-expert) even recommend setting up a Google alert in your name.

But, what can one really do if, for example, your top search results include an out of date, hopelessly inaccurate and embarrassing article from your hometown newspaper? As much guff as Facebook gets for its poor record on privacy protection, an average Facebook user has a relatively powerful set of tools at his or her disposal: you can delete or untag yourself from embarrassing photos, limit who can view your profile, and even delete your profile completely. But, is there anything you can do about embarrassing search results?

In 2010, Hugo Guidotti Russo, a Spanish plastic surgeon, filed a legal complaint with Spain’s privacy regulator, the Agency for Data Protection, asking them to order Google to remove a 1991 article about a malpractice complaint from his top search results. Russo insisted that because he was cleared of wrongdoing and the article did not mention this, it was within his right to privacy to have the search results removed. The agency agreed. Google is fighting the ruling which was recently referred to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on the issue of whether the ruling clashed with EU freedom of expression laws.

The case of the Mr. Russo is connected to the larger issue of whether governments should—or could—guarantee individuals a so-called “right to be forgotten.” Though, like most newly recognized rights, the contours are hazy and the terms ambiguous, the right to be forgotten is catching on. In 2009, the French secretary of state launched a campaign for le Doit a l’Oubli (the right to oblivion, though no English translation is quite adequate) that culminated in the adoption of so-called “codes of good practice” by several trade associations, social networks and search engines. The provisions are themselves broad but somewhat vague: adoptees are obligated to give notice to users about how to exercise their privacy rights, respect an individual’s right to consent to data processing, to receive prior notice of procession and to object to the use of their data. The European Union is currently tossing around some proposed legislation which would give people the right, any time to have all personal information online deleted—though it’s hard to see how this would work in practice. Even in the United States, where courts have been much less willing to allow individuals to assert a general right of privacy against search engines and social networks, the FTC has issued a working paper called “Safeguarding Consumer Privacy in an Era of Fast Transform” which recommends, among other things, that individuals have the right to have inaccurate information about themselves removed from databases.

Critics of the “right to privacy” argue that, in its extreme form, it’s tantamount to suppression of speech—censorship. Most facts and opinions worth writing about–and reading about– are facts and opinions about people. Individuals have always been able to fight others who publish false information using libel and defamation law, but falsity is not a requirement for a privacy claim. If individuals are empowered to suppress true or arguably true information written about them by third parties under the guise of privacy, the argument goes, our freedom of expression is significantly burdened. In one infamous case, Wikipedia was sued by two German murderers demanding that their names be removed from an article about their victim. German law allows criminals’ names to be withheld from association with their crimes after their sentences are over. The case of German murderers points to another criticism of the right to privacy: practicability. If a German court orders the removal of the names from the article, does it only apply to the German language version of Wikipedia or with a .de web url? Does it apply to any article accessible from Germany? Or only if the servers which host the article are located in Germany? Moreover, does Wikipedia, which can be edited by anyone, have an ongoing obligation to ensure that the ex-con’s names are kept of the site? For a website like Wikipedia, which relies heavily on user donations, and which relies on a relatively small number of editors to maintain their pages, an ongoing obligation to monitor for information about individuals is a heavy burden.

From the perspective of someone with a rare name—say for example, the author of this post (but three out of the first four results are not me!)—the right to delete whatever search results I wanted from Google would certainly be a blessing. That being said, there is a thin and hazy line between what information is truly private—which should be protected—and what information is merely embarrassing or inconvenient, but a legitimate part of the public discourse.

The British Parliament has approved a law authorizing temporary suspension of internet access for those accused of repeated copyright infringement, reports the New York Times. Opponents of the law, such as the Open Rights Group, promise to turn this into an election issue in Great Britain.

Canadian company Wi-Lan has filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas against 19 high-tech companies—including heavyweights Apple, Dell, Motorola, Acer, and others—for allegedly violating its Bluetooth patents, reports Business Week.

From Wired: a U.S District Court judge has given a lawyer a 30-day sentence for contempt of court for encouraging people to flood the judge’s e-mail account, to persuade him to side with the lawyer’s client in a civil suit. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is now reviewing whether the judge had the authority to impose a contempt sentence for conduct outside the physical courtroom.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a 30 year computer ban for a sex offender, saying that the ban is “substantively unreasonable” and “aggressively interferes with the goal of rehabilitation,” reports Wired’s Threat Level.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauds the 2nd Circuit’s decision in Tiffany vs. eBay, finding the online auction company not liable for contributory trademark infringement on the basis of users selling items in Tiffany’s signature blue boxes, but the digital rights organization worries about the lack of a statutory “put back” procedure in trademark law.

The New York Times has a detailed article explaining China’s internet censorship methods.

After a federal court held that the FCC cannot impose network neutrality on ISPs (as PC World discusses), the FCC declared its intention to pursue its National Broadband Plan nevertheless. CNET reports that the FCC considers the court’s ruling to have forbidden one technical mechanism for achieving the FCC’s goals, but not the goals themselves.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has found that Google’s AdWords program does not infringe the patent for a bidding system determining pricing for ads on search results, Ars Technica reports.

Mexico may disconnect millions of people’s cell phones for failure to register their identities with the government via text message. This is part of an attempt to fight crime by regulating cell phone use, Reuters reports.

Ephemerallaw assess the chances of Microsoft being sued for the Internet Explorer 6 vulnerability involved in the hacks recently suffered by Google, Adobe and other major companies.

Billboard.biz reports that search engine Baidu, Google’s arch-rival in China, has won a piracy case brought by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry for linking to illegal music downloads.

As Apple launches its latest handheld device, Erblawg reports on Apple’s battle again Fujitsu for the “iPad” trademark.

The US District Court for the North District of Georgia upholds the forum selection clause in the Facebook User Agreement in copyright infringment suit, writes Eric Goldman on the Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Keeping with Facebook, OUT-Law reports that the Canadian Privacy Commissioner is investigating Facebook’s reponse to its earlier investigation into the social networking site’s privacy policy. See also the New York Times advice on the three Facebook settings every user should check now.

The European competition watchdog has finally cleared Oracle’s $7.4bn purchase of Sun Microsystems, reports the Financial Times (See our post on the backstory here).

And on a related note, Microsoft warns Google that it is likely to come up against the EU Commissions over anti-trust issues sooner or later, reports E-Commerce Times.

Californians with medical marijuana prescriptions can now carry any amount of pot, rules the California Supreme Court. Report by Court House News.

]]>http://stlr.org/2010/01/29/stlr-link-roundup-january-29-2010/feed/0795STLR Link Roundup – January 1, 2010http://stlr.org/2010/01/01/stlr-link-roundup-january-1-2010/
http://stlr.org/2010/01/01/stlr-link-roundup-january-1-2010/#respondFri, 01 Jan 2010 18:27:50 +0000http://www.stlr.org/?p=760Continue Reading →]]>Happy New Year! We bring you the last links from the second half of December 2009 on the first day of 2010.

Clever or illegal? How online retailer Amazon escapes paying sales tax (and saves you from it as well), from Gizmodo.

Misbehaving in the jury box: jurors researching on Wikipedia led to an overturned murder conviction, and jurors friending each other on Facebook is the subject of mistrial challenge, reports the ABA Journal.

Former state representative and convicted pederast Ted Klaudt claims his name is covered by “common law copyright” and says news organizations that use it in coverage have to pay him $500,000 in licensing fees, blogs The Legal Satyricon. That’s TED KLAUDT making the claim. TED KLAUDT.

Wired’s Threat Level reports on a new hacker application that deletes traces of illegal computer activity when it detects a commonly used suite of police forensic tools beginning to run. If it doesn’t work perfectly, this could be a godsend for prosecutors looking to indict on obstruction of justice charges.

Microsoft dips its toes a little deeper into open-source waters with Moonlight 2, the Linux version of its web application framework Silverlight. With the new version, Microsoft extends its Patent Covenant to End Users of Moonlight to users who get the framework from any third-party, including distributors like Red Hat or Ubuntu.

Judges and Facebook – Is it ok to be FB friends with lawyers? The Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee says no, reports the New York Times.

Michael Arrington and Crunchpad sues JooJoo for the joint tablet venture that so publicly went wrong, says Gizmodo.

The Environmental Protection Agency announces that greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health and environment. New federal and possibly international regulation are expected to follow, according to the New York Times.

Who will protect us from the robot invasion? Maybe lawyers will, a pair of scholars at Stanford University tells the San Francisco Chronicle.

The legal implications of new technology aren’t all covered in intellectual property classes – Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government blog looks at the possible use of eminent domain to take the “wind rights” of farmers and build green-friendly windmills.

Text messages are the new “digital lipstick on the collar” and are increasingly showing up as critical evidence in divorce cases, writes the New York Times.

The EU drops its antitrust case against memory-maker Rambus in exchange for concessions, according to the Associated Press.

A payroll and credit card payment processing company’s failure to protect itself from massive data breach was not grounds for a securities fraud case by shareholders. Law.com discusses the New Jersey District Court ruling.